Thursday 25 January

Diving and admin

Today is another theoretical day off, and indeed for Hags it is - but I still have masses of diary to catch up with, and get up early to do that and draft lots of emails for Children's World - I will send them off from the hot spot at the Green Paradise when we get back there tomorrow. Hags and I both go for a morning dive at 10 - all very lovely. He also goes off on the afternoon dive, but I stay and catch up with admin work, otherwise I will feel very stretched when we get back to Banda - we have one show Friday afternoon, 2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday before we fly to Medan on Monday morning. I will be able to be in email contact with the office again (Chris and I have managed to talk each evening - 7.00 here, post-show, is noon in England, so that works very well - it will be harder when we get to Australia and will be 10 or 11 hours ahead) and there will be a mass of hotmails to deal with - and goodness knows how many more badge bits we have to prepare.

Plans for the future

A nice last dinner on the beach and we settle up our dive bill and our food bills and say goodbye to all our Gapang friends. Haggis has burned a Reggae CD for Aris who runs our favourite restaurant shack, and he is very pleased. Double check that we are booked on the 7am minibus and head to bed. Sad to leave Gapang and indeed the whole island of Pulua Weh where we have made many friends through the shows, but we will be back - hopefully in November 07 or February 08. There is still a great need here for fun - I really can't believe the conditions so many people are still having to live in so long after the tsunami - hopefully things will have moved along a lot by the time we next return. Fadlullah of Muslim Aid has asked us if we would be prepared to work in Jogjakarta as well as Aceh next time we are in South East Asia. There was a terrible earthquake there earlier this year and 300,000 homes were destroyed, so they too are living in pretty awful conditions and are badly in need of some cheering up. We would obviously love to go - we will just have to set about raising the money. Goodness, I hate fundraising - but without raising funds, we can't do the work. I think the fact that our work is so cheap (well under £1 per head) and it is direct and immediate, stands in our favour - hopefully people will want to support a small, innovative charity that actually gets on and does what it does fast and well.

Back to Banda tomorrow